Eremotherium

Eremotherium (from Greek for "steppe" or "desert" "beast": ἔρημος "steppe or desert" and θηρίον "beast") is an extinct genus of giant ground sloth in the family Megatheriidae. Eremotherium lived in southern North America, Central America, and northern South America. It was one of the largest sloths, with a body size comparable to elephants, weighing around 4.5 tonnes (4.4 long tons; 5.0 short tons) and measuring about 6 metres (20 ft) long, slightly larger than its close relative Megatherium.

Originating during the Pliocene, Eremotherium migrated northwards into North America as part of the Great American Interchange of fauna between North and South America following the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama during the late Pliocene. Finds of Eremotherium are common and widespread, with fossils being found as far north as South Carolina (with a single record also reported from New Jersey) in the United States and as far south as Rio Grande Do Sul in southern Brazil, and many complete skeletons have been unearthed.

Eremotherium was widespread in tropical and subtropical lowlands and lived there in partly open and closed landscapes, while its close relative Megatherium lived in more temperate climes of South America. Characteristic of Eremotherium was its robust physique with comparatively long limbs and front and hind feet especially for later representatives- three fingers. However, the skull is relatively gracile, the teeth are uniform and high-crowned. Like today's sloths, Eremotherium was purely herbivorous and was probably a mixed feeder that dined on leaves and grasses that adapted its diet to local environments and climates. Like Megatherium, Eremotherium is suggested to have been capable of adopting a bipedal posture to feed on high-growing leaves.

Only two valid species are known, Eremotherium laurillardi and E. eomigrans, the former was named by prolific Danish paleontologist Peter Lund in 1842 based on a tooth of a juvenile individual that had been collected from Pleistocene deposits in caves in Lagoa Santa, Brazil alongside fossils of thousands of other megafauna. Lund originally named it as a species of its relative Megatherium, though Austrian paleontologist Franz Spillman later created the genus name Eremotherium after noticing its distinctness from other megatheriids.

Eremotherium became extinct at the end of the Late Pleistocene as part of the end-Pleistocene extinction event, alongside other ground sloths and most large mammals across the Americas, though some specimens potentially suggest that Eremotherium might have lived up to the early-middle Holocene. The extinction of Eremotherium and other megafauna post-dates human arrival in the Americas, who may have contributed to the extinctions. Some potential, but not definitive evidence has been found for the interaction between humans and Eremotherium remains. Some potential early-middle Holocene records of Eremotherium have been reported from Brazil.